The news that Michael Bay would be back to direct Transformers 4 didn’t come as a surprise, exactly, but it did run counter to some of Bay’s earlier hesitations about returning for a fourth installment. In a new interview, Bay discusses why he decided to come back after all — as well as the resistance he got in trying to shake things up with the relatively low-budget, non-Transformers project Pain & Gain.

Meanwhile, director M. Night Shyamalan, who also knows a thing or two about critically derided franchises, is said to be mulling over three separate projects for his follow-up to After Earth. Could one of them be The Last Airbender 2? Uh, maybe, but it seems like a stretch. Read about both Bay and Shyamalan after the jump.